As is so often the case a Coldplay concert has got us thinking about - wait for it - the Edmonton Oilers .

Go figure.

2009

Three years doesn't seem like that long ago when you think about it really. Same Prime Minister, same Shawn Horcoff Contract and Fat Joe was the snarling mess of abdomen and chins you see above.

It was at a 2009 Coldplay concert that one of the more momentus occasions in the history of OilersNation occurred. Robin Brownlee had just written an article about how none of the newspapers in Edmonton were sending anyone to cover the Entry Draft in Montreal.

Now this was back before the Oilers used the Draft as the Centrepiece for Hope every year and it was a relatively tame event. The Oilers drafted a pair of Swedes early on in Paajarvi and Lander and we all had a good laugh at the hometown Habs taking Petteri Simila 211th overall.*

In the lead up to the '09 Draft, Nation Citizens absorbed the news that no local scribes were going to be on hand and they demanded to be able to make donations to send Brownlee to Montreal on all of our behalf. The only thing that @bingofuel and your ol’ pal Wanye could think of to do at the time was take donations through the site to quiet everything down.

As we hooked up paypal to OilersNation for the first time in the history of the site we also turned on email notifications to our phone to tell us if someone made a donation. Then our phone blew up later that night at the Coldplay concert as the Nation not only donated enough money to send Brownlee - later Gregor - to the draft but we were also able to donate money to the Stollery as well.

It was absolutely insane and marked one of the key signposts on the voyage from OilersNation going from "that thing we were trying to make" becoming "an actual thing."

All we can remember about that Coldplay concert was the notifications from Paypal pouring onto our phone and covering the Entry Draft for reals later that summer. Awesome.

*Or maybe that was only us. We were giddy pretty much around the clock that weekend on account of Gregor being in Montreal and sending back reports.

2012

Add three years and subtract 200 hundred pounds from Fat Joe. Another sold out Coldplay concert at Rexall Place and during the track Violet Hill Chris Martin bombed out the lyrics “"if you love Wayne Gretzky won't you let me know” to a great cheer from the audience.

Bringing up the Great One for the obligatory “OMG COLDPLAY TOTALLY GETS ME” roar got our brain box a spinnin’.

Now firstly we L-O-V-E Wayne Gretzky. There isn’t a better player in the history of the league, a more gentlemanly Gentleman on Earth or someone more deserving to be cheered in Edmonton and around the world for the next thousand years.

He is simply the best there ever was, is or will be. We mean this whole heartedly – our very name is a mashup of Wanye Gretzky and Kanye West for heaven's sakes. We love 99 more than every Oiler ever and that includes Jordan Eberle and Ryan Nugent Hopkins combined into some sort of Super-Duper SuperStud.

Having said that we can’t help but wonder when the day will arrive that bands passing through town get the word “for a quick cheer after song 6 come out in this here jersey and say this here name” and the legendary Gretzky name isn't involved.

HE'S SO HOT RIGHT NOW

Does there reach a point where one of the three - soon to be four - megastuds becomes the easy ovation at an unrelated Edmonton Concert? Will "even Jordan Eberle was forced to lean back" ever be a thing that Fat/Skinny Joe throws out at an Edmonton show?

Or will we be cheering The Great One shoutouts when the Rolling Stones inevitably swing through town on their 2040 World Tour.

Will anyone rise to the occasion of capturing our collective hearts and minds for a generation like 99 has done for the past 30 odd years? Heavens knows the talent has arrived.

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It seems like bands are either briefed on "Edmontonians love Wayne Gretzky" or "Edmonton hates Calgary". If I had a NICKEL for every time a band said "Let's see if you guys can cheer louder than Calgary" I'd have, like... Twenty cents. BUT STILL. When it's *four* bands you know some Edmonton event planner has a laminated card that they leave in every dressing room beside the martini glass full of brown M&Ms.

Late in the 1st NHL season the oil are warming up, pregame skate at the Colliseum. Wayne skates over to the side boards and pulls off a strip of tape from his Titan. He throws it over the glass and a young father with a toddler in his arms tosses jr aside and wrestles with another adult for the tape[me] while jr wails on the ground. Such was the power of The Great One.

It will happen, it's just a matter of when. I imagine at a Cold Play concert in Detroit he would get a bigger cheer mentioning Yzerman or Datsyuk than he would mentioning Gordie Howe.

Whoever hoists the cup above their head in Oilers silks will be the one to be cheered loudest. We remember the leaders/captains (Messier and Gretzky but not Kurri or Anderson), so I think that whichever of the kids emerges to wear the "C" and lift the cup first... that's the guy. Brownlee is pretty savvy and thinks that will be Hall, so that's my vote. I give it ten years.

I pray for the day (and i believe it is not far away) when fat/skinny joe screams out "is there a better player then my boy eberle?" to which the crowd (as one) scream SQUEEEEEEEE. on that day i shall declare to the almighty lord, that i am ready to be taken. Wanye... great article.